PC Magazine goes green, trashes printed version

In a nod to the times, PC Magazine is closing its print division in favor of pushing its digital properties to existing and potential subscribers. It’s another company welcoming the Internet age and incidentally a nod toward the green movement. And the profit potential is immense.

The transition will happen in February 2009 and at that point, PC Magazine has promised to become 100 percent digital, according to post on its Web site. This move is in line with a larger trend toward reading publications digitally, especially with products like Sony’s Portable Digital e-Reader and Amazon’s Kindle.

But PC Magazine may be taking a different direction. The company seems to be focused on keeping its existing layout intact so that long-time readers are still able to easily find content, but that could make it difficult to integrate with other eBook readers.

The rising costs of print materials was a specific catalyst, “the ever-growing expense of print and delivery was turning the creation of a physical product into an untenable business proposition.” That sounds pretty similar to saying escalating gasoline prices are making traditional combustion engines an untenable business proposition. Just take a look at GM’s desperate situation.

As a long time reader of PC Magazine, I welcome this change. With every printed issue I would go through a jaded ritual of ripping out all of the rigid ads, blow-ins and a general cleansing of irrelevant content. With the digital version my hope is that the company will focus on placing advertising in an eloquent manner, as relevantly as possible, in a supportive manner.

There are also a few other benefits like searchable content (which incidentally could drive traffic from Google if posted on its site eventually), a table of contents that immediately takes you to the advertised page, and lastly our landfills will have that much less paper to decompose.

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